Europe Finds Clean Energy in Trash. Denmark burns its trash in combined heat and electricity incinerators, feeding the heat to residential homes. This results in only 4% going to landfill, reduced costs for residents, reduced reliance on oil and gas and substantial cuts in CO2 emissions.

Good article, but it would be better if they incinerated waste via pyrolysis. This form of burning has no direct emissions whatsoever (pyrolysis means to burn something in a vacuum) and turns the waste into a combination of methane gas and charcoal.

The methane gained from the process can be used to a) burn the next lot of waste (more methane is produced from pyrolysis than is needed to create pyrolysis), b) sold and added to the local gas infrastructure (which is used for cooking and heating), c) used to power a turbine and create electricity, and/or d) used to power methane-powered vehicles.

The charcoal gained from the process can be turned into biochar and ploughed into fields or used as garden fertilizer.

Charlie: Let's talk about the trash. What do I do with the trash? How do I dispose of the trash?

Dennis: I don't know. We disposed of the trash in the dumpster last night? What are you doing with it?

Charlie: I'm taking it to the furnace.

Mac: We have a furnace?

Charlie: Absolutely. Where do you think the heat comes from?

Dennis: You burn the trash in the furnace?

Charlie: This bar runs on trash, dude. This bar is totally green that way.

Dennis: How is burning trash green?

Charlie: Uh, because I'm recycling the trash into heat for the bar, lots of smoke for the bar, giving the bar the smoky smell that we all like.

Dennis: The bar smells like trash.

Mac: That's exactly the opposite of green, Charlie.

Charlie: Oh, I'm sorry. I could put the trash into a landfill where it's gonna stay for millions of years, or I can burn it up, get a nice, smoky smell in here and let that smoke go in the sky where it turns into stars.

Mac: That doesn't sound right, but I don't know enough about stars to dispute it.

We have such an incinerator in the city I live in and most of the city uses the waste heat for heating in the winter.

A while back the local uni did an extensive air quality study and determined the sources of our pollution during winter months. Particulates from winter tires and the gravel used on the roads during the winter; pellet stoves; diesel / heating oil exhaust; and legacy residential coal stoves... the waste incinerator (which was recently retrofitted) contributed much less than any of those other sources.

Sure you're CO2 levels might go down, but imagine all the chemicals being sent into the air that are much worse for humans. CO2 isn't dangerous to humans so much as to the balance of the world climate.

I never liked the trash incinerator ideas, there are better solutions like depolymerization which is more expensive I'm sure, but it actually breaks the trash back down into useful components not just heat.

I also have my doubts that the CO2 output on burning trash is less than the CO2 output on naturally decaying trash, but I guess if you're using high temp vaporization it's possible to get that efficiency.

It's just that we have 100 times more earth to pollute than we have atmosphere. We could bury trash miles underground and it would probably be safer than burning it and releasing whatever chemicals don't vaporize.

It's easy to become overly focuses on CO2 but that is just one of many pollutants and one of the least harmful pollutants compared to methane, N2O, mercury, uranium and thousands of others which were probably not tested for.

Far cleaner than conventional incinerators, this new type of plant converts local trash into heat and electricity. Dozens of filters catch pollutants, from mercury to dioxin, that would have emerged from its smokestack only a decade ago.

Same is customary in Sweden, since quite some time ago. We don't really have landfills with general garbage, it's all sorted, and most of it recycled. I'm starting to realize that this isn't the case in most of the world.

This is being done in Belgium for a long time. Trash in the plant in Bruges for example is being burnt, and with the heat, steam is made. This steam is used to warm up the hospital, houses, ...

The smoke that is generated by burning the trash is filtered so thoroughly that the only thing that gets in the air is water vapor. The only thing that needs to be taken care of after the whole process is containers of ashes.

I don't know exactly what happens with the ashes but my dad and brother work as technicians in the waste-to-energy plant in Bruges so I guess I could ask them if anybody is interested.

Sure, something will get past the filters but I'm fairly confident the Danes would not be building these things in the middle of wealthy residential areas if the level of pollution was anywhere near harmful levels. FTA:

Dozens of filters catch pollutants, from mercury to dioxin, that would have emerged from its smokestack only a decade ago. ... The plants run so cleanly that many times more dioxin is now released from home fireplaces and backyard barbecues than from incineration.

That statement is factually ambiguous. Are they talking equal volumes? How many people run their barbecues 24/7? I applaud their steps toward cleaner energy, but the fact is it is still polluting. Don't tell me it's green, it's just less dirty.

It's an MSM report, not a peer-reviewed paper - but the statement is not ambiguous if taken at face value. The contribution of dioxins to the environment is less from the incinerator than from domestic fires and BBQs. Simple and clear.

Only if you want to believe that the NYT is deliberately attempting to mislead is it "ambiguous".

If I burn 50lbs of wood in my fireplace in one day, Vs 50lbs of garbage in the power plant, I am sure I'd be releasing more pollutants. However, in a 24 hour period they will go through tones of material in their furnaces, and I bet release far more pollutants, but they don't tell you in the article how they are comparing the outputs, hence: ambiguous.

We're not going to completely stop burning fuels for energy, so why not get some use out of the waste instead of burying it, especially the plastics, which have about the same energy content as the fossil fuels they're made of?

If someone is reporting your first example, they're either stupid or dishonest. I choose, until evidence shows otherwise, to trust that the NYT is reporting honestly and intelligently. It seems you really want this report to be false.